News anchor tries to draw cannon, draws oh, look
Technically Incorrect: Don't be too quick on the draw when you play the Google AI game Quick, Draw.
Technically Incorrect offers a slightly twisted take on the tech that's taken over our lives.
You know where this is going, don't you?
Live television has its difficulties.
There's no safety net. There are no do-overs. You say it, you do it, it's out there.
This is something discovered last week by Seattle news anchor Kaci Aitchison. On her Fox Q13 show, she was invited to play Google's AI game Quick, Draw.
This is a delightful invention in which you have 20 seconds to draw something, and the neural network tries to guess what you're drawing and learns as it goes along.
The software invited Aitchison to draw a cannon. Try this yourself at home. It's not so easy.
She stepped up to the screen with enormous enthusiasm and began to draw what to many eyes looked like an enormous, well, yes. A phallus.
Naturally, all members of the studio crew began to fall about laughing. Aitchison herself tried to cover up her art, as her co-anchor explained: "There's no erasing."
Still, she tried.
In the end, the software gave her another word to try: truck. She was more successful here, but by this stage no one could focus through the teary laughter.
At least all she enjoyed was a little embarrassment. This wasn't close to the pain endured earlier this year by a Polish breakfast show host who allowed an illusionist to accidentally impale her with a nail.
Almost 1 million people have already enjoyed Aitchison's faux-pas on YouTube. However, she still insisted that she was most definitely drawing a cannon.
The comments section is open to psychotherapists, amateur and professional.